


This Impossible Year

by WordsAndWishes



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 17:11:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18877558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WordsAndWishes/pseuds/WordsAndWishes
Summary: Feyre answered the riddle moments too late, and Rhysand falls. The Inner Circle is left to grapple with the realization that their court will never again be complete.Written a while ago and posted on my tumblr.





	This Impossible Year

* * *

_“Feyre!”_ Rhysand screamed, as he lunged at Amarantha, dagger grasped in his palm. The demon queen only smirked, pushing his talons back in and hurling him against the crimson marble. The impact broke both the stone and his immortal bones.

Again.

And again.

And _again._

All the while, words barely audible whispered from Feyre’s lips, her mortal body broken. “Please. Stop hurting him.”

All the while, Tamlin was on his knees in front of Amarantha, voice wavering as he begged for the life of a mortal woman. He did not rise, or fight. But his desperate words were in earnest.

“Love.” Feyre spoke again, voice barely a murmur as Amarantha paused her torment of both Feyre and Rhysand. “The answer to the riddle….is…love.” 

Until finally….as the words died on Feyre’s lips, the light died in her eyes, something forever cracking in her spine. 

Rhysand, the almighty Lord of Night, felt her soul begin to slip away. And as his chest heaved for air, broken bones desperately tried to fix themselves, he reached out for her.

But there was nothing but the endless darkness. For once, it failed to comfort him. 

Beyond where he lay, he was dimly aware of how Tamlin charged Amarantha and ended her once and for all. No one moved to help the Demon Lord, concerned only with their own families. 

Rightly so. He had dug this grave for fifty years.

As he closed those remarkable violet eyes, Rhys felt himself fade into the darkness of whatever lay beyond.

* * *

Morrigan was in the townhouse, reading through some reports from the Palaces. It was dull work that Rhys used to split between them.

_When the prick gets back, I’m going to make him do fifty years of this by himself._

Halfway through a rambling document about herb shortages, she felt it. Something had changed. It felt like an Illyrian had flown her up to the sky at breakneck speed, leaving her numb and starving for oxygen.

For a moment, there was only silence.

Then, a deafening roar of thunder and a flash of light.

The weights that had been on her shoulders for fifty years vanished. Which meant….the extra bindings placed around Velaris had vanished.

Her tactician’s mind sprang into action, calculating the possibilities.

Option One: Rhys’s power had somehow failed him due to some nonlethal, but bleak, circumstance.

Option Two: He had been freed, and the bindings were removed because Amarantha had been killed.

Option Three: Amarantha had killed –

No. She wouldn’t allow herself to consider that final option. 

But something had changed, and not for the better _._ She could feel it in the air, taste the tang of it on her tongue. 

Then, the pain hit her, sharp enough to make Mor drop the ink-heavy pen in her lap. It was a shooting agony, racing through her body, starting at her fingertips and working its way to her heart.

 _Am I having some sort of stroke? Am_ I _dying?_

Gasping, Mor clutched her chest, unable to think as the pain coursed through her veins. When it finally subsided, she slumped in her chair, considering the situation.

Oddly, the first thing she thought was: _This is a new blouse. I’ve permanently stained it._

Common sense and pain break her trance, chaining her back to reality with sharp needle-like stabs in her veins. As if her blood….

Blood. _Like blood oaths._

It took her back to the last time her blood had burned like this. Over five hundred years ago, swearing fealty to Rhysand at his coronation.

The blood oaths she had sworn.

_Which meant – no._

_No._  

She couldn’t not even think it, forced the thought from her mind. Her cousin would come home.

_Rhysand has survived for fifty years in hell, and five hundred years before this. This is not the end._ _It cannot be._

A quake shook Velaris, and Mor shook her head equally as hard in desperate denial.

But she was The Morrigan, and her gift was truth. Yet again, it had given her a cursed answer.

* * *

Azriel was flying above Velaris, alone with only his shadows and thoughts. From here, the city was silent, and the distant glowing lights made it serene.

_This was one of Rhysand’s favourite ways to see Velaris._

_Is. Still is one of his favourite ways._ Az reminded himself. Rhys was still alive, but there were times when he seemed like nothing more than a memory.

The silence was a welcome reprieve from the panic that had existed in recent years. His network of spies was limited now – especially with Azriel himself trapped in Velaris. The details he had gleaned in the last fifty years had been precious few.

Amarantha had named herself Queen of Prythian and cursed Tamlin – the details were still foggy on that. Seven times seven years had been given to break the curse, and if the unchanging state of Prythian was any sign, Tamlin had failed. 

Spring’s golden prince was the damnation of all Prythian.

But flying like this, nearly weightless, was enough to make Az get lost in his thoughts.

They were interrupted, however, by a splintering crack of thunder and a flash.

Pieces of…glass? Falling through the sky in a crude imitation of Starfall, sparkling and scintillating all the way down. Azriel shot upward and snatched one out of the air. It didn’t cut him as glass might’ve, but instead just dissolved in his palm.

 _The ssshield, the shield…._ The shadows whispered to him. They sounded stronger and louder than they had in decades.

_The shield?_

Azriel shot up to the sky. He was already flying close to the top of the shield. Then - he passed through where it should have been, flying free through fresh air for the first time in fifty years. The shield truly had shattered.

He made the connection in the same instant the blood oath turned to fire in his veins.

Immediately, Az dove close to the ground at breakneck speed, eardrums popping with the changing altitude.

He wasn’t even halfway to the townhouse before the reports start flooding in, no longer muffled by the fog of the shield. The first message was Balekin’s croaking voice, low and urgent. “Lord Tamlin has killed Amarantha. The masks held to Spring’s faces can be removed – it’s mayhem.”

From the Court of Nightmares, Nerissa whispered that she had felt a tremor minutes before. One that felt like death and life and darkness, like the passing of power from one High Lord to the next. Azriel could feel his shadows wrapping closer and closer around him like a dark cocoon.

From Under the Mountain, Cerridwen’s report was heavy with tears, and voice raw as though she had been yelling.

“Rhysand screamed for her, fought until the end.” Were her only words. Her voice was so soft it felt like she was right next to his ear, grief palpable.

 _Surely Cerridwen meant until the end of the unknown female’s life….not until the end of his own._

The reports continue flooding in, but for the first time in centuries Azriel found he didn’t care about any of them. The whispering of the shadows scratched, rather than soothed his weary soul. The townhouse was in view now, and he was flying completely on autopilot. For the first time in centuries, his hands shook.

Rhysand had survived through five hundred years of battles and challenges. He had to still be fine.

Those who threatened the Night Court bled.

Those who hurt his High Lord would face a wrath insurmountably worse.

* * *

To Amren, the tremor wasn’t merely a slight earthquake. She had been around long enough to feel the passing of hundreds of High Lords.

 _But none of them have felt like this._ No, Amren could feel this in her heart, her very soul – if you could say a creature like her had one, some amused corner of her mind thought.

She sprang from her chair in her flat, winnowing to the townhouse.

The icy blackness only engulfed her for a few seconds before she appeared on the hard cement steps of the house. Inside, there was only a single lamp on the second story lit. Mor’s footsteps pounded down the stairs, accompanied by sobbing.

Amren looked up, seeing Cassian approaching. Behind him, Azriel was a rapidly-growing dot in the distance. The panic on Cassian’s face was palpable – mirrored in her own face as well.

 _Rhysand is the most cunning High Lord I’ve known in millennia. He’s almost certainly fine._ She was racking her brain for another explanation. _It’s conceivable that Amarantha killed someone else important, or there was some faebane snuck into his evening tea._

Looking back down at the city, Amren could tell the citizens were concerned. Mothers poked heads out of windows, hugging children close to their chests. Down the street, she could hear someone praying to the Mother.

The blind terror was settling over them rapidly, clouding their thoughts. None of them would be any use like this. Closing her eyes, Amren took a deep breath.

_Everything will be fine. You must focus, Amren. This is not the time to become weak._

When she opened her eyes a moment later, Mor burst through the door, nearly knocking Amren over in the process.

She looked a complete mess, with ink stained all over her violet tunic. Her hazel eyes were wild, breath heavy. In any other situation, Amren would have snapped at her.

“ _Rhys…is gone.”_ Morrigan rasped urgently.

Within a few moments, Cassian had landed on the steps, narrowly avoiding crashing into one of the neighbor’s topiaries. Azriel followed, with slightly more grace then his brother. “You all felt it too.” It wasn’t a question.

Mor met Azriel’s eyes evenly. “What are the shadows saying?”

The words triggered something in the spymaster, and his eyes became distant. “He’s…gone.”

Mor collapsed to the ground with a scream, and Cassian shook his head. “I’ll believe it when I see his body. He will make it out.”

The shriek gave Velaris a clear enough signal of what had happened, and Amren could hear the first strains of open weeping begin in the streets. Even if they didn’t know exactly who had passed, or how, Rhysand was a good enough guess – and the only member of his circle absent.

Azriel only said; “A human girl somehow broke the curse. Amarantha is dead by Tamlin’s hand.” He spoke in short, stunted sentences that had no emotion in them at all.

Amren was aware that she should join the rest of the circle in their tears, but instead she met Cassian’s eyes and nodded slightly.

Sorrow had filled her to the brim, but many millennia had taught her how to hold it in, keep it contained. She had not done the same for rage. 

“Let’s go.” Her voice was steady.

Cassian, crouched by Mor’s side, just stared at her.

“Paint that mountain red. Make them _bleed._ ” She elaborated, words like ice.

“We will find Rhys _alive.”_ Cassian insisted – wholly unlike him. As the Commander, he had become accustomed to death just as much as any of them.

Realization filled her eyes, and Mor picked herself up off the ground, movements short and fierce. A purpose had given her strength, but her expression was lachrymose. “I’ll come with. To punish them all.” Cassian’s words had fallen on deaf ears, it seemed.

A crease rose between Cassian’s brows. “Morrigan - Amren. There is no one left to punish. The High Lords have slain Amarantha and her followers.” Sorrow coated his words, voice raw.

Mor turned to him, and Amren could see the grief and sorrow in Mor’s chest fracturing into the sharp edges of wrath as she honed her focus on the General. “Don’t _‘Morrigan’_ me, Cassian. _We are not seventeen anymore.”_ Her voice cracked before she continued.

“Rhys is _dead,_ and I don’t give a single damn about war between courts. There is _always_ someone left to punish and I am going to _MAKE SURE THEY KNOW IT_.” She became nearly hysterical at the end of the sentence, but Amren was inclined to agree. “The High Lords….Beron and Tamlin and –“

Amren opened her mouth, about to say something that would shut them all up -

She was interrupted by a near-soundless _whoosh_ as Nuala appeared by gate of the townhouse. Rhysand’s limp form was in her arms.

* * *

Cassian’s skin went clammy for the first time in fifty years when he saw Rhys’s body. That was all it was now, a body. A container that his soul no longer resided in, a corpse which his magic now flowed out of.

But he would never think of it as just a corpse, because it was Rhysand. Though it was clear, from the limp neck to the leg and back at wrong angles, that it wasn’t him alive.

For the first few moments, none of them moved. Amren was the first to spring into action. He and Azriel followed, Mor close behind. She raced down the steps and to the gate, shoving Nuala aside and pressing glowing fingertips to his chest, confirming what they already knew.

At the cost of two innocent lives tonight and many more in years past, Prythian was free.

And The High Lord of the Night Court was dead.

* * *

The funeral was a week later. Rhys, Cassian thought wryly, would have hated this much pomp and circumstance. It was outdoors in an enormous park, though a giant altar had been erected. Per Illyrian tradition, Rhys’s body was already burned. A single sphere sat on a pedestal, containing his ashes. Later in the day they would be scattered in the wind in front of the entire congregation - practically all Velaris was attending.

A priestess led the ceremony, going on about sorrow and loss and overcoming adversity. Cassian stopped listening two minutes in. Instead, he thought about Rhys as the Inner Circle had known him best.

It would be years before they would forget things about him, he knew – the way Rhys’s laugh sounded, his obsession with hair products. The fierce look in his eyes when he defended his court. But those years would come.

Some memories would live on in the minds of a few – memories of blood rites and moonlit journeys and two young cousins sneaking out at dark.

The rest of Prythian would not know just how much he bled for this world, Cassian realized. He had kept up the façade until almost the end, when it broke as he was screaming for Feyre Cursebreaker’s life.

Beyond the walls of this city, Rhys would be unknown. Only the memories of the Lord of Night would live on.

As the first strains of a funeral dirge began, Cassian let a single tear slide down his cheek. 


End file.
